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The collapse of the econ PhD job market

chrisbrunet.com

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Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#181

Post by bikezen »

kelipso wrote: post #175
hluska wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny that instead of making points or adding data, you just repeat the same slogan and act like a victim. Many of us have tried to listen for a long time but we have never found any intellectual meat on the slogans. It’s boring.

What’s there to discuss any more? There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments. “Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven). Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it.…

Have you considered that it's not filtering for conservatives, but conservatives are self-selecting out or can't cut it at all? Isn't liberal arts degree a literal punchline to so many on the right, yet you cant figure out why that might skew left?

> maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven

Huh, wonder why this world view doesnt jive with academia.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#182

Post by kelipso »

awesome_dude wrote: post #152
layman51 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any serious evidence, but the idea of "bloated administration" has been a meme for many years and I remember this humorous article describing it as a new chemical element floating around since around a decade ago: https://meyerweb.com/other/humor/administratium.html

Yeah - I often hear politically motivated speakers talk about "bloat" in various parts of organisations, but I've never (literally) seen anything beyond "numbers" That's not really helpful, because, as I said to the other poster and have subsequently been down voted for it - that's not genuine analysis, we don't know anything about who is being described as "administration" nor do we know why they're there in the fir…

I know a current professor who has been in the same department for 15 years and the admin bloat thing is definitely real. Just tons of new people employed for who knows what. Maybe the numbers are out there maybe not (who is looking at them?) but it’s definitely not an imaginary thing or made up for political purposes.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#183

Post by TMWNN »

nothrowaways wrote: post #116

The scientific community needs a new safe haven. It would be 1. A country specifically tailor made for scientists and engineers. 2. A country with no first class citizens Something like Switzerland or Dubai for science and engineering, but made from scratch.

>2. A country with no first class citizens

Wait. A country that does not favor its own citizens? At all? Why even have "citizenship" at all? Put another way, why would anyone want to move there to become a citizen of said country?

Good grief. This reminds me of the heights (depths) of /r/redditisland.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#184

Post by yongjik »

kelipso wrote: post #175
hluska wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny that instead of making points or adding data, you just repeat the same slogan and act like a victim. Many of us have tried to listen for a long time but we have never found any intellectual meat on the slogans. It’s boring.

What’s there to discuss any more? There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments. “Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven). Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it.…

Members of an ideological group that sees educational institutions as their enemies less likely to find jobs in educational institutions, news at eleven.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#185

Post by nothrowaways »

TMWNN wrote: post #183
nothrowaways wrote: post #116

The scientific community needs a new safe haven. It would be 1. A country specifically tailor made for scientists and engineers. 2. A country with no first class citizens Something like Switzerland or Dubai for science and engineering, but made from scratch.

>2. A country with no first class citizens Wait. A country that does not favor its own citizens? At all? Why even have "citizenship" at all? Put another way, why would anyone want to move there to become a citizen of said country? Good grief. This reminds me of the heights (depths) of /r/redditisland.

Do you even understand what first class citizen means?

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#186

Post by kelipso »

bikezen wrote: post #181
kelipso wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s there to discuss any more? There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments. “Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven). Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it.…

Have you considered that it's not filtering for conservatives, but conservatives are self-selecting out or can't cut it at all? Isn't liberal arts degree a literal punchline to so many on the right, yet you cant figure out why that might skew left? > maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven Huh, wonder why this worl…

Well if “I can only act until there is hard data” is a principle in academia then maybe academia deserves what it’s getting. We live in a Bayesian world after all.

Also the whole idea that they are self selecting out is absurd. There are many flavors of conservative, not just the ones you see on Ali G show or whatever.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#187

Post by goalieca »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #66
1980phipsi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data science wasn't even a degree you could get 20 years ago. Twenty years ago if you were interested in what is now called data science, you were getting a degree with some kind of exposure to applied statistics. Economics is one of those disciplines (through econometrics).

> Data science wasn't even a degree you could get 20 years ago. It was called statistics

Actuarial science perhaps

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#188

Post by kenjackson »

kadushka wrote: post #125
awesome_dude wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bloated administration departments Can you demonstrate how those administration departments were bloated (in any way) edit: re-added "administration" which I had, for some reason, neglected to add, thinking that it was obvious that that was what I was talking about.

Yes, this fact is well-known and has been widely discussed. The first two google search results provide the stats: https://students.bowdoin.edu/bowdoin-review/features/death-b... https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/admini...

The numbers are alarming, but I feel like seeing more details would be really helpful. For example MIT and CalTech both have numbers that indicate something like 7x more non-faculty staff than faculty. That sounds crazy, but is it? I'd love to know more detail about the distribution of people to those non-faculty roles.

I feel like this is an example where we can get almost everyone behind reducing costs at college by showing better data. If you were to show, for example, that 7x is almost all carbon emissions admins then I think we'd see a ton of support to cut these positions. But it may also be the case that people see the admin responsibilities and say, "Oh... OK, that makes sense". The problem is -- with this data, I have no idea.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#189

Post by Konnstann »

supportengineer wrote: post #136
kenjackson wrote: post #40

UCSD this year said they are not taking any new math PhD students due to the fiscal situation. The world of academia is in more flux than I've seen in recent memory.

Their acceptance rate is in the 25% range. Clearly the demand is there, so why is there a "fiscal situation"? In the mid 90's I went to a university that had cafeteria-style food, and dorms with no air conditioning. You don't need Waygu beef and massages in order to teach students. There shouldn't be any "fiscal situation" in higher education. What is a university anyway? It's some buildings and classrooms with profe…

You forgot about administrators, who are climbing in number relative to the number of students for no good reason.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#190

Post by linguae »

reducesuffering wrote: post #132
sarchertech wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Austrian school is economics for people who never learned calculus. That doesn’t mean they don’t have interesting things to say now and then, but it’s mostly just a collection of folk wisdom.

Keynesian Bernanke on famed Austrian Milton Friedman: "Among economic scholars, Friedman has no peer. His seminal contributions to economics are legion, including his development of the permanent-income theory of consumer spending, his paradigm-shifting research in monetary economics, and his stimulating and original essays on economic history and methodology." https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/2…

Milton Friedman was not part of the Austrian School. Rather, he was part of the Chicago School. While both schools promote free market economics, there are differences. In fact, one of the biggest differences has to do with their views on central banking, with the Austrian School generally being against fractional-reserve currencies while the Chicago School being more sympathetic. Milton Friedman was a monetarist.
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